Burden
by Sailor Kasterborous
Summary: Sarah Jane pauses for a moment, late at night, and thinks.


What a burden. Oh, _oh_, what a burden.

Night was still, which was okay, because stillness was a feeling that she was still getting used to, even after all these years. She was never still. Running, laughing, fighting, winning, losing, crying, dancing, dying... It never ended. Even now, far from him, it never ended. One breath, hitching in her throat, jumping as she tried to breathe. One tear, one shiver, one ache that raced across her skin. The fear of not knowing what came next.

He was gone again. The fact that she had to put the word "again" at the end of that put a pang in her stomach. No matter how hard either tried, or no matter how little they did, they seemed unable to escape each other. It was beautiful, if a bit unreal, each time she saw him again, but... But it wasn't good. It was scary. It was terrifying.

It wasn't his regenerations. She'd seen so many of them... well, she could handle that now. It was _him_. His touch, his speech, his movements. The way he'd turn to her, and say something mad, and leave her completely okay with that. She'd loved him once, albeit fleetingly. But they had always been better friends than lovers, and that was alright. He was her best friend. The mutual feeling as they clasped hands and ran away from – or sometimes even towards – the next greatest threat. It was never lost on her, not even now, so many years later.

It was maybe an hour since he'd left. Eleventh regeneration, he'd said. Even she was beginning to realize how insane that must be, after all she'd been through with him. Over and over again, dying and then living. Pure torture, when you got right down to it.

She had one life, and according to him, she was living it fantastically. Hunting aliens, protecting the earth. He couldn't be more proud, and she couldn't be more scared.

He'd turned her into a fighter, a protector, maybe even a bit of a killer. She was okay with that – she'd accepted it long ago. Maybe a part of her, when she'd first left the TARDIS, had wanted her own life. She had that now, and the really mad part was that she still had him, too. No one got that lucky. But she did.

What a burden.

No one ever told her she needed to fight aliens after she left him. No one ever told her that she had to go on protecting the earth. But what else do you do? What choice do you have? You see everything, you watch the rest of the universe, ever-changing and ever-powerful, and then you go home. What comes next?

She'd wandered around Aberdeen for a few hours after he'd left her, trailed by a little yellow Labrador. And then, eventually – inevitably – she'd found him again, on accident, while investigating a school... and suddenly it all changed. Suddenly, she was living in Ealing, in a great, mysterious house on Bannerman Road, with an alien computer and a robot dog. Suddenly she was defending the earth under his name, and keeping the world safe. Suddenly UNIT was contacting her for help. Suddenly, after pulling the earth out of the Medusa Cascade, she got a few calls from Torchwood as well. Suddenly she was someone.

Most would find it a bit amazing, a bit unreal. But after all she'd been through, she was numb to it, and she couldn't really tell if that was good or bad. They'd seen everything together. They'd watched worlds burn, seen planets clash, eased the rift between species, ended deadly wars. They'd taken a free-fall into the empty brilliance of a thousand different galaxies and come out unscathed. They'd willingly flung themselves out onto the road, right into the path of death and destruction, and waited to see what might happen. They'd tempted fate and laughed at the results. A pinprick on the fingertip of reality, drawing blood. Changing time itself. The ability to do something mad, something impossible, something wild, and to know you were afraid, but not let that stop you. To go from following, to learning, to leading. To accept the fact that it would probably make you insane. To see something bad, and decide to stop it. To run, to fight, to dance...

_Til we meet again, Sarah._

What a burden. The burden of knowledge.

She realized then that she was shaking and sat back on her knees, looking up out the window and clutching herself as she shivered. The tears were there, but they weren't going to come. This was a different kind of sadness. She was afraid. She was so, _so_ afraid. And that was okay.

Normality was a joke now. Nothing was normal after what she'd been through. She would never feel normal again. Now, and for all of eternity, she was floating through all of space, an anomaly. To an extent, she'd become as alien as him. She stared at the stars and saw worlds, instead of pinpricks of light. At this point, she could even give names to a good deal of them. That part of her that had once been an ignorant journalist had shrunk to near nothing. She was something more, now. Something different.

Each time he left, she told herself to stop, to not wonder when they'd meet again, to not pause and think about the future. She told herself that one of these days she'd get let down – one of these times it had to be the end. It couldn't go on forever. One day would be the last day. His story may be eternal, but hers wasn't. Someday, he would leave, and she would die. She would become a ghost, a memory, a whisper. That was natural; that was fine. But she kept telling herself that she couldn't get her hopes up. She couldn't expect him to come back. The moment she did that would be her undoing.

And yet, he kept popping up. He kept appearing in her timeline, little flashes of him, or great gaps of time in which he was always present. He was almost like a guardian, watching over her... and yet at the same time like a crow or vulture, circling and waiting to strike.

Once, oh so long ago, it had been ecstasy. Nothing could compare to the feeling that had come with traveling at his side. They were a force to be reckoned with, two anomalies that shook the universe. That feeling was gone now. The entire event had been chipped at, worn away like a temple is by time. It was hollow now; abandoned. Things weren't the same as they'd once been. He wasn't the same.

Long ago, it had been a dream. So good and fantastic that she might as well pretend it was impossible, for she didn't deserve anything that great. But that feeling was gone. He was different now, like lightning and thunder and death and danger, instead of smiles and old-fashioned charm. Nothing but a shadow of himself. Not the man she'd once known.

To say it had gotten old wasn't exactly accurate. It never really could get old: it was the rest of the universe, after all. But it had faded. It had lost its shimmer.

Of course she still wanted to see him. Occasionally his name would drift through her thoughts; pound in her head, and she would miss him more than anything. To say she was unsatisfied simply wasn't fair, because he'd given her everything. It wasn't possible to be unsatisfied. She was restless; that was the proper term. Restless and tired, even a bit unsettled. Of course even that couldn't be said, not when she knew him. If anyone deserved to be restless, it was him. There was no end in sight for him. He'd always be going on, forever, running, fighting, dancing... it would never end.

What a burden. For both of them.

She'd always wanted to ask him if he would ever settle down. It seemed like such an unnatural thing for someone like him to do, but he had to stop somewhere, someday. Everyone did. She wondered when his time would come, because it had to. That was a fact. There was no avoiding it.

She had little scars; little wounds. Little marks on her heart to signify everything she'd been through. Often words, or terms, or small things whispered around her would ignite them again; draw the blade once more across their surface, and she would bleed out endlessly. The pain of everything she'd seen, of watching him die, and change, and not understanding what was happening. The horror of the beauty. She was just as scarred as she was inspired.

Sometimes she considered going with him if he showed up again. Sometimes she thought that it might be nice, that maybe it would help. In the end though, she always talked herself out of it. She had a life now; people to protect. She couldn't just abandon them on a whim to go back to him. One day, long ago, she would have. But she was different now. He wasn't as important to her as he had been. They'd grown distant, and that wasn't necessarily bad. She was her own person now.

After defeating the Krillitanes with him, Rose and Mickey, she'd expected it to be much harder than it actually was to pull away from him. In the end, it was as simple as accepting the rest of the universe – embracing it, even – and then working towards defending the earth. Still, though, he kept appearing in her life. Each time was great, and cheering, and fantastic, but also very much hurtful. Each time she saw him just brought more of the horrors back; more of the memories that she was trying to avoid. It was a gift, to know him... and yet a terrible curse.

Such a heavy burden.

When she was younger, before she knew him, she would often lean against the windowsill in the attic of her house and try to count the stars, like so many other kids her age. She didn't really have a fascination in them – she was just curious. That's all it came down to, in the end – curiosity. It was the reason she'd slipped into the TARDIS for the first time, a stowaway. She was just curious. She just had a voracious need to understand what was going on.

In the end, it was nothing more than a need to learn, to know what was out there. She could accept that fact without too much trouble. In all honesty, that seemed like the way it was for everyone – you start out curious, but then you get to know him, and everything seems to change, as though someone flicked a switch... Suddenly, it's about him. Suddenly that's all that seems to matter – time and space is just a bonus. He's the real prize.

For her, that was gone now. She was past his time, and although it had just been an insult of sorts when she'd first said it, his assistants really were getting younger. Well, at least in her eyes – _she_ was getting older. That wasn't a sad thing, it was a fact. It didn't upset her, not really. If there was one thing the Doctor had taught her, it was that things age. She was no exception.

She just wished she didn't have to be so... sad.

Traveling with him had been a beautiful thing, with no regrets. To sit here now, watching the stars and being depressed, didn't seem right. It just wasn't fair that all of time and space, everything there ever was or will be, should come with such pain. Such a great, powerful thing shouldn't have so much torture hidden beneath it. It certainly wasn't right, but... that was the price. That was what came with it, and she'd been okay with that. She'd accepted it. Her worry was for him; having to deal with that each day. For all he did, he deserved better.

Sometimes she wished she could give him a gift, or something like that, each time he visited, but she dismissed the idea as silly. They'd grown beyond gifts, and anyway, what would she give him? He had everything anyone could ever dream of. And yet it came at such a price...

She had to go on, that much was apparent. Wallowing in the past rarely did anyone any good. She had to get up and move on; keep running, fighting, dancing. She had to get caught in the endless pull of time and fly forward. Her job was clear, and she had to keep doing it, for him. It's what he would want, and when she got right down to it, it's what she wanted too. To get up and keep going. To forget about it.

Of course she could never really forget, but she could keep going. She could pretend. Moving forward was, unfortunately, the best way to stop her heart from being broken.

She got to her feet, very slowly, and gave the stars outside a willowy sigh. They seemed just as sad as she was, and that was alright, because it made her feel as though they were there for her. She wasn't always so alone as she thought – sure, there were things that she could never even begin to describe to those she knew, but she had all of space watching over her. That was nice. If only that knowledge wasn't so heavy on her shoulders.

_Til we meet again, Sarah._

Such a burden. A burden unlike any other.

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><p>This is a oneshot I wrote as celebration for getting 25 watchers on DeviantArt. Of course you guys get to read it, too. I'm actually not even sure how many of you are subscribed to my story feed, but it doesn't really matter. I still love you all.<p>

Of course it's about Sarah Jane and the Doctor, and was mainly inspired by this video on Youtube: /watch?v=X1D4xyUD5Ls It's also because I didn't really feel like I gave her justice in Chaos Crystal, and I figured it's worth another go.

So yeah, that's about it. I hope you all are having a nice day. Be sure to leave a review.


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